15 June 2008

chapel in the moonlight

The Sunday paper sheds a bit more light on the current craze in weddings. The celebrity affair referred to yesterday is there - apparently it cost $20m, so evidently this is a very well-paid footballer. Makes you wonder, doesn't it? Makes even merchant banking seem respectable.

However it is also revealed that "an international magazine" has paid $10m for "exclusive access" to the wedding. The Economist, do you think? What's incredibly sad about this is that someone has made a business decision that investing $10m is likely to return them even more in sales and advertising. Advertising for what - brain removals?

Anyway, the princesses are getting their themed weddings: the paper also reports that one, who had likened herself to Cinderella, had a fairy story theme with tables each named after a storybook character and guests receiving a glass slipper bonbonierre, whatever a bonbonierre might be. I just hope that cleaning dirty nappies and mopping the kitchen floor also renders lots of satisfaction. I don't know what the groom's favourite story character was, but I hope that lawnmowers come into the equation somewhere.

Aaarrgh, cruel and unnecessary, yes?

Well, cop this, then. There's a desperate shortage of eligible blokes in Brisbane. They're all in Mackay and parts west, earning squillions in the mines. Well, that's part of it. The other part is evident in the 'social' pages, where mobs of young females with flashing eyes and bared fangs parade their 'it's all about me' pout. Danger, Will Robinson.

And the AAMI ad: "Give Ami a ring...you following me, Todd?"

(Addresses Mrs VVB: "Geez, I'm turning into my old man, aren't I?")

In other news, the Irish people have rejected the latest incarnation of a super-EU state through voting down accession to the Lisbon Treaty. This doesn't seem to have attracted much comment around the Australian blogosphere, I guess everybody is fixated on Obamaramaworld.

This Times column is headed "Real people 1, Eurocrats 0 (after extra time) and no cleverer headline could you find. Yes, the backroom boys, the urgers, the faceless internationals - along with true believers, no doubt - have seen their dream fall apart yet again, but Mum and Dad, the salt of the earth, etc etc, have maintained some grip on their national culture and, by extension, their history .

Their only pro-EU comment that I can muster some sympathy for is that Ireland has been ungrateful, as its turbocharged economic growth since the 1960s has been on the back of lots and lots of EU loans and grants.

And that money, folks, was made available in turn on the back of outrageous tariffs on Australian agricultural goods.

However, regardless of its provenance, the Irish made good use of that money - they invested heavily in education and R&D. They also chucked a lot at attracting foreign investment and attracted more than few world leading firms in IT and so on. But I don't think they make Toyotas there.

Anyway, that's nothing compared to this. How come we don't get analysis like this in Australian newspapers (don't bother, no-one answered this last time I asked either). In lieu of a considered response, have some dot points (and count yourselves lucky that I didn't do it in Powerpoint):

lucky we're in the commodities producing group, eh?

what will happen to the oil-producing nations when the oil runs out and all they have is condominiums (condominia?) and villas?

yes, inability to control oneself now results in people being stabbed in supermarket queues: good job in bringing up your children, people;

governments, under the thrall of the Chicago school, liberalised international financial flows;

the OECD, yet another body utterly beholden to neo-liberal economic philosophy, thinks it can devise an answer;

pull the other one, it has bells on;

meanwhile the poorest will be starving even more quickly and in greater numbers;

spell moral hazard, then put it into a sentence;

maybe another sentence;

no, a different one;

what do you think are the chances of some genuinely different thinking. Can you get George Soros elected king of the world or something? He could have Ross Gittins in the boy sidekick role.

OK, enough. You know what I think about all this stuff. Keeping on doing the same thing and expecting a different answer, what's that a recipe for?Anyway I can't leave you on such a negative note, so I must pass on a friend's advice to her daughter as said daughter left with boyfriend to see the Krusty Demons: "don't flash your t*ts unless you really want to!"Ah yes, we children of the 60s and our approaches to child rearing. At least our own kids don't stab people.